Styles and Systems

I have often made the statement that a style is distinguished by its appearance and a system is distinguished by its results. What I’d like to do is explain what I mean by this statement.  For the most part there are two different methodologies when it comes to martial arts training. The stylistic approach is more specific looking at specific responses to specific combat scenarios. The systemic approach is more general, building general skills and or attributes that can be useful for combat. With that being said there are few if any martial arts that are 100% stylistic or 100% systemic in their approach. Some fall somewhere in between, some lean more in one direction than the other.

Often you will find curriculums that start with one way of training and then change to the other as you get further along in the curriculum. In some martial arts curriculums you can spend 5 to 10 years learning nothing but technique, again by that I mean specific responses to specific attacks. Later, at the more advanced stages of training you will learn the underlying principles that explain why those specific techniques work. Also you will learn how to generalize on that principle and create techniques on the fly as the situation dictates.

The systemic approach can be more difficult especially if the student has no previous martial arts experience that allows him or her to put what they are learning in context. There are many martial arts system that teach you the skill of taking balance, or the skill of using sensitivity to maintain a mechanical advantage, positional advantage, or both. The exercises and drills used to develop these types of skills are often somewhat abstract and may not even have a direct correlation to some type of combat scenario. This can cause even more difficulty for the student who will often lose interest, being unable to make the connection.

This I think is the reason why many teachers in the old days would change how they taught based on the inherent mental and physical attributes of the student. Say for example your curriculum contained forty empty hand forms, each one emphasizing a different area of martial application and physical expression. Some might emphasize power, others speed, and others agility. Often the teacher would prescribe which forms the student would learn based on what they brought to the table. The big strong guy would learn the power forms. The small quick guy would learn the speed and agility forms. Only the student who was being trained to be a teacher would learn all the forms. For anyone else it was really unnecessary. In addition to that, not only would teacher customize the material, he would also customize the teaching method. Let’s be honest, everyone has a different style of learning, and some of the knives in the drawer are a little bit sharper than some of the others. A good teacher can take these things into account and teach the student in a way that produces results. Some people may not have a grasp or appreciation of scientific thinking or philosophical abstraction, so a more technique oriented pragmatic approach is better. Others may be able to appreciate a broader more abstract approach, for those people a more systemic approach is appropriate.

As I have said in previous post, it is important to understand who you are and what you want as far as your martial arts training. Having a good deal of self awareness will help you to determine what is best for you in both what you want to learn and how you want to learn it.